A number of high impact fastener failure cases, notably the recent event on the SAS span of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge have underlined the importance of a recent discovery of the effect of thermal up-quenching caused by hot dip galvanizing on internal hydrogen embrittlement of steel used in high strength fastener applications. Whereas conventional wisdom has attributed acid pickling to be the only source of process related (internal) hydrogen with hot dip galvanized parts, it was discovered that a potentially more significant source of internal hydrogen was the freeing of trapped residual hydrogen by the up-quenching effect of hot dip galvanizing. Lower hardness steel, in the range of 25-38 HRC is typically not embrittled by the galvanizing process, as evidenced by the fact that most high strength structural fasteners can be safely galvanized.